Creative Technologies

FutureWorlds

It has been an exciting time for me and my project Conv-O. I was able to present Conv-O at AUT live and both got to meet the Dean of Design and the head lecturer from computer science and relations and they both like the idea of Conv-O.

Now I am preparing for the presentation of my project in a researchers lunch for the 28th of August. This event is an internal AUT event and after, it gives us the opportunity to expand upon this initial idea and I have a diary full of notes where we can take Conv-O

This is a software development cycle called waterfall model. It is an obsolete method of development. All the planning is done right up the beginning and that is it.

If I am thinking about my program, it exist to help people see their conversation which goes back all the way from the beginning.

In terms of manufacturing, where this methodology came from, it was Ok in dealing with it, but as it was applied to software development methodology, problems began to surface quickly.

If we have an 18-24 month project and the client get their final product at the end of the development cycle and the vision of the developers and the client was lost along the way, then everyones times was wasted. Leading to wasted sales etc.

This is where agile comes in.

Agile is a development cycle that promotes rapid and flexible response to change and change is going to happen withing a development cycle.

It is true that both of these methods are more closely linked to developments but I think Conv-O can potentially play a role here one day.

At mornign stand up and Sprint Conv-O can provide invaluable data, What happened last sprint, last stand up meetings. Conv-O is simple and convinient and potentially provide more data than users can come up on their own with neural network and make connection where there was just not enough time to figure out things.

This is IBM Watson, this is IBM’s Ai and is currently hosted on the cloud and people with access to IBM Bluemix have access to the services or capabilities of IBM Watson which I got.

One evening 3 months ago, the inaugural event at IBM building at the viaduct called Ai Happy hour happened.

I found the event randomly as I was scrolling through facebook randomly one afternoon and decided to participate in it. And I did, a person called Fernando “Issy” Issuru spoke that evening. That was it. It was that moment I knew I wanted to do pretty much after University and probably the rest of my personal career, AI.

I decided to make my Semester two project in line with this and began using IBM Watson and trying to incorporate to my projects, which I have done so far.

I am currently using java to write my program and I am using the speech to text API to incorporate to my program, which have been going pretty good.

So my semester two project is an extension of my semester one project with the working title of Convo-O.

It is a visualization of a conversation at its core and what we submitted is essentially a proof of concept which worked but very basic.

It creates bubbles with topics written on them, and the bubble increases in size as people talk about the topic this works by taking the average noise in the room and if something goes over that the radius of the bubble increase.

It visualizes the program by seeing how the topic was talked about and how it grows.

Now I have the goal of taking it out of the proof of concept and into a more product ready stage (hopefully).

I want to make three things essentially. I have to convert my program into an apple ready code, because it was written in processing, which is in java which only works for android, so that is one.

I want to use speech to text functions ( IBM Watson and Bluemix) and grab the words from people talking and if certain words are heard then it is only then only increase the bubble. Specific events

Last one using the intent function of IBM Watson so when it hears Add new topic or any variant, it can determine that someone is asking for a new bubble to be created removing the need for a keyboard and mouse/Using another feature of IBM Watson to keep or store the data. This one is more challenging because it is all about learning about databases which I don’t know more about but this is the thing that is most talked about my project to anyone I talk to is how I capture data, which I don’t.